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I think that's what happens when role-players are brought up on a diet of video games, in which such simple necessities are often overlooked in favour of the more cinematic experience of video games.
Video games, films... Or even games like AD&D - where every penny (gold piece) would go towards better armour, weapons, etc.
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My own hunger rules a quite simple:
"Every other day after the first without food incurs a Handicap of –1. If the character continues to go without food for a number of days equal to his Strength score, he then begins to lose 1 from each of his primary characteristics per day. Each day of eating properly restores three days’ worth of hunger damage."
Handicap being a broad (and cumulative) penalty to all of the character's actions and can be built up in a number of ways, not just hunger.
That's simple enough and works when characters have
no food...
...I was dealing with a situation where the players ensured their characters ate,* but what they ate was as cheap as possible (so their characters would subsist on trail rations for weeks, if not months, on end). Sooner or later, the character's health would suffer; thus I started thinking of a long-term "permanent" Attribute reduction.**
* My players weren't stupid - they knew what would happen if they avoided food altogether! ** Not really "permanent" as good eating can see the attribute(s) recover.Reasoning that it is actually possible to subsist for a very long time on a scarce diet (thinking of some students I knew, or even the very impoverished in certain parts of the world), but that fitness deteriorates over time in such circumstances; I determined that living on such a reduced diet would reduce Attributes down to the maximum "average" value (i.e. 12). There may have been further reduction possible, but I'd have to find my notes!
The idea here is that it is perfectly possible for a person (i.e. character) to
subsist on a poor diet, but they wouldn't be able to compete in terms of fitness with someone who was well fed.
As characters with "average" Attributes are not at a great advantage in DW, I think I chose to leave these alone and target those whose Attributes were above average. Thus it would be the "strong men" of the party that would suffer, slowly losing their combat bonuses as their
Strength slowly withers away.
A friend of mine had a similar concept, but included that persistently "roughing it" (i.e. sleeping in very poor conditions - floors, etc.) affects sleep, so this would also reduce
Strength.
As I recall, we both applied penalties exclusively to
Strength as this appears to be used as the equivalent for "Constitution" in DW (q.v. poison rules, for example). It takes proper starvation before someone's reactions (i.e.
Reflexes) are reduced and the same goes for
Intelligence - so we avoided that (also kept the rules simple).
Historically, rich people (who ate and slept better) were healthier than their poor counterparts. If characters insist on living in poverty (just so they can buy better armour and other kit) deserve to lose their fitness...